Marx as a younger man had been a devotee of the Hegelian dialectical approach to cookie baking but increasingly found it difficult to square this with real life (or "material") cookery. It was only when Marx met up with Engels that the he began to diverge from his earlier beliefs.

Engels, who had a rich pops, provided Marx with state of the art nineteenth century kitchen utensils and the use of his unsurpassable kitchen facilities. Some critics say that Marx sponged off Engels (the former having no income whatsoever) but Engels, in his own memoirs, descibed the relationship as a "symbiosis of the philosopher and the scientist".

Over a number of years Marx conducted many "experiments" and finally arrived at his dialectical materialist philosophy of cake making. Almost immeadiately after adopting this new method there was a quantum leap in the state of 19th century baking. Marx himself came to a new formulation of the "Victoria Sponge".

The publication of the pamphlet "Baking made Easy" seemed to bear out the words of Blanqui (from almost a generation earlier): "It takes twenty-four hours to make a revolution". Within weeks of publication the french radicals in Paris had discovered the universal truth in the "French Fancy" and their comrades in Dusseldorf were baking "Apfel strudel" and "Vienesse Whirls". This was indeed a revolution which set fire to all of Europe.

The effect of the this pamphlet can be traced throughout the 19th and 20th century and has influenced manym many people even including the makers of "Spangels".

I hope this short tract has opened up your eyes to the wealth of cakemaking history and spurs you on to further the cause of baking in the world.

©2003 Pastry Zine    last update : 1 January 2003